Alfred Fitzpatrick: Founder of Frontier College

Steve Pitt is a Toronto-based freelance writer and an award-winning journalist. He has written many young adult and children's books, including Day of the Flying Fox: The True Story of World War II Pilot Charley Fox.

In 1893, Alfred Fitzpatrick, a young Protestant minister from Nova
Scotia, went to the wilderness to preach the gospel to the men in the
logging camps and to find a long-lost brother. As he drove his buggy
along a frontier logging road, he stopped to offer a haggard old man a
ride; miraculously, it was his missing sibling. The sight of his
brother, nearly broken by brutalizing work and uneducated, convinced the
young cleric that working men needed more than mere preaching. So
Fitzpatrick founded Frontier College (an education system that still
survives in the remotest parts of Canada) and dedicated the rest of his
life to helping people in isolated communities become educated. While
pursuing his dream, the Reverend often found himself in direct
confrontation with society’s leading businessmen, political leaders,
and even jealous educators.

James Morrison tells Fitzpatrick’s story in a well-researched and
highly readable text. In addition, he includes many fascinating
photo-graphs showing the appalling conditions of the 19th-century lumber
camps, often a one-way path of slow disintegration for thousands of
immigrants and nonskilled Canadian workers. Highly recommended.